Saturday, October 9, 2010

Already the shops have Christmas decorations and since I love shopping and Christmas, I am always on the lookout for wonderful gift ideas. Yesterday, the Herald Sun featured a company called Mooza Designs who create gorgeous hand crafted resin and acrylic letters, words and symbols. Imagine receiving a gift like the word BLISS personalised for you in all your favourite colours. I have 6 nieces and forever racking my brain as to what I can get them for Christmas...always something special just for them. I think this will be one my Christmas list.

Saturday, October 2, 2010

Finally the beach house is finished. Months of hard work by Mr B...plumbing, painting, rubbish removal (never ending trips to the tip) scraping, floor sanding, lighting and landscaping , it is now finally available as a normal rental. The photos don't do any justice as to how nice it looks compared to the before shots. I now have this great desire to start another project I have wanted to do for many years...to rent it out as a holiday cottage, fully furnished and of course decorated in the Sarah Richardson way.

The kitchen...well, not much we could do at this stage. Just a good scrub, a new oven given to use by our best friends, painted the underneath the bench white and put on some new taps. Eventually, I will get an IKEA kitchen like on this fabulous blog A Beach Cottage

I think give 4 years and we may be in a position to set it up as a Holiday House. I still need to do some research and see if its a viable option for the area. At the moment, we need a steady income flow from a long term renter. Already, we have had a number of people just knock at the door wanting to rent it but not go through an agent. This is just not going to happen as an agent checks references and deals with issues that may arise. I will always use an agent as its my peace of mind. Now its finished (to a tidy up standard) I can see the potential that this little 1960's beach shack has to offer. No longer have we any desire to knock it down but keep the house the way it is just add 2 major outdoor areas with decking, barbecue area and of course beautiful seating so guests can enjoy the views. So many of these type of houses are being knocked down and replaced with big double story contemporary homes that are capable of sleeping up to 12-15 people. I think this narrows your market as these houses rent only to the family market in Summer time. My idea is to appeal to couples as a weekend retreat throughout the year. It will only sleep 6 and I think this is a good way to advertise it.

The curtains are from IKEA and although the photos do not do them any justice, they look fantastic in real life. I wanted to get the big ringlets (not sure of the correct name) so they are easy to open and shut. These windows took 6 large panels with 2 panels worth $50. I got them all taken up professional so the end result looks like they were custom made for these windows. The floors Mr B and his friend did theme selves. almost killed both of them. They are also the most beautiful feature of the house. Not sure if the pics show (Mr b took the pictures of course LOL) but they are red gum parquetry and very expensive in today's dollars. So for a cheap 1960's beach holiday home, it now starting to show its beautiful features.... I just had to look past all the other stuff.